MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives is seeking additional realignments of up to P100 billion in the proposed P4.1-trillion national budget for next year.
“My estimate is there would be transfers of P50 billion to P100 billion because of more funding requirements for the Department of Education (DepEd), Commission on Higher Education (CHED), among others,” Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano said yesterday.
As the House leadership is seeking additional realignments, Senate Pro Tempore Ralph Recto is urging government officials to stop their practice of “pasa load,” a form of artificial spending made possible by transferring allotments from one agency to another to cover up failure to spend. “Pasa load” is a term for sharing cellphone call or text credits to other cellphone numbers.
“What’s happening now is allotments are being transferred to other agencies to make it appear they’ve been ‘obligated.’ They do this so they can boast that funds have been obligated and can’t revert back to the treasury,” Recto said in Filipino.
Cayetano said the proposed changes would be presented during the House-Senate conference that would be convened after senators pass their version of the 2020 budget.
He assured the Senate and the nation that the planned realignments “will be transparent and will not be pork or parked funds.”
Cayetano cited the case of the DepEd, which he said would need additional money to repair school buildings damaged by successive earthquakes in Mindanao.
“The good news is we have a big budget for next year, P4.1 trillion, so we have room for changes. It’s just a question of balancing it. It would not be difficult for DepEd because they transferred some school building funds to their voucher program to help senior high school students they send to private schools,” he said.
He said he would like to know how much the education department would need for classrooms, how much for financial assistance to senior high schools and “if it is now the policy to give more vouchers to private schools instead of building more classrooms.”
He said it would be more difficult to find funding sources in the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways to repair earthquake-damaged roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
“You can take away money from right-of-way appropriations. But what if those are exhausted? There would be no funds to pay for right-of-way in private properties,” he added.
Cayetano pointed out that in the case of CHED, the agency transferred billions of scholarship funds to state colleges and universities to fund the free tertiary education program.
“But 70 percent of a scholar’s expenses consists of transportation, food, school supplies. So, it’s not possible to scrap the scholarship fund. It should still be there to help the scholar for his needs other than tuition,” he stressed.
The Speaker urged the Senate to pass its version of the 2020 budget this month so the two chambers would have up to two weeks to come up with a final version of the spending bill.
That would give them enough time to send the final copy to President Duterte for signing into law before yearend to avoid a repeat of the delay of three to six months in the enactment of this year’s outlay, he said.
Before sending the proposed 2020 budget to the Senate last month, the House realigned P9.5 billion by augmenting funding for several programs and agencies.
The biggest augmentation of P3.5 billion for palay buying was given to the National Food Authority through the Department of Agriculture.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) each received an additional P1 billion.
The other realignments included P850 million for DepEd, P200 million for the Department of Health, P500 million for the Philippine General Hospital, another P500 million for the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, P275 million for the Davao International Airport, P500 million for rural electrification and P500 million for athletes’ training and preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
Anti-pork Sen. Panfilo Lacson has described the House-initiated changes as “institutional amendments” in the budget.
No pasa load please
Recto, meanwhile, explained that “pasa load” practice prevents unspent budget from reverting back to the national coffers.
“This creates the illusion of money spent when what happened was the budgetary equivalent of passing the buck,” Recto added.
As of December 2018, Recto said the PNP still has to collect about P5.08 billion worth of projects from Procurement Service-Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) intended for the acquisition of common-use supplies, materials and various equipment.
He said the PNP or the AFP for instance would entrust the task of procurement to PS-DBM instead of bidding out a project.
“In the books of the AFP or PNP, the funds have been obligated, when in reality, they have not been,” he added.
Funds for the Department of Transportation (DOTr) also end up the same way, he said. “They subcontract procurement. And in the report card, that money has been marked as obligated,” he pointed out.
“One favorite repository of parked allotments is the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC),” Recto said.
He said some recipient agencies given procurement responsibilities have questionable competence.
“The question is what’s the competence of these agencies to, say, conduct a due diligence-compliant procurement of highly specialized goods like trains, ships, planes and automobiles?” he asked.
Quoting the Commission on Audit (COA), Recto said the transfer of obligational authority to outsource procurement has not expedited the purchase of goods and services.
He said the PNP once engaged the services of the PITC to procure equipment amounting to P1.35 billion but the latter managed to deliver only P137.5 million worth of purchases by end of last year, or one-tenth of the amount.
COA’s 2018 audit report for PITC noted that the corporation received about P30.63 billion worth of fund transfers from various agencies.
A COA audit report for the same year placed at P17.04 billion PS-DBM’s unrealized procurement for other agencies.
“We should stop this ‘lateral transfer’ of funds whose intent is to beat the clock, a pasa-load scheme to extend the life of an appropriation about to expire,” he said.
He maintained that both houses of Congress “should use their oversight powers during the budget implementation to determine the real status of an appropriation.
“In fairness to DBM, it doesn’t want to be the dumping ground of expiring allotments, doing what agencies are supposed to do,” he said.
No media coverage
Meanwhile, Cayetano thumbed down yesterday Lacson’s proposal to open the bicameral conference committee to media coverage to ensure transparency.
“We in the House of Representatives have no problem with transparency but we have to be realistic on how to get the job done,” Cayetano told reporters in a chance interview.
“Senator Lacson is correct in terms of transparency. But maybe he should start with the Senate because there are two houses. So, for the proposal to be good, the Senate should support it. What’s the use if we agree to it or not if the Senate won’t agree to it?”
“Everyone who is given their free 30 seconds, five minutes, 10 minutes or 15 minutes of fame, will take that, but we’re talking about getting things done here,” the Taguig congressman said. “It’s easy to play to the crowd if it’s open.”
“We’re not afraid of transparency, but we don’t want to make the bicam a circus,” he added.
“We congressmen have our constituents in our districts, and we always get to talk to them because our districts are small. But the senators do this through the media. So let’s ask them if that’s what they want to happen because the bicam might not end,” Cayetano said.
Leaders of the House thanked and commended Lacson for declaring the proposed P4.1-trillion national budget for 2020 “pork-free.”
“Under the guidance of Speaker Cayetano, the final version of the 2020 GAB (General Appropriations Bill) approved by the House is in sync with the inclusive growth agenda of President Duterte,” Deputy Speaker LRay Villafuerte said.
Lacson observed though that he found only P9.5 billion in the House’s institutional amendments.
“The House had remained strong and steadfast in doing what was right,” Deputy Speaker Raneo Abu of Batangas said.
House Majority Leader Martin Romualdez also thanked Lacson and lauded lawmakers for their “hard work” in ensuring a pork-free budget for next year.
“His proposal for the Senate to adopt the national budget that we approved is a step in the right direction. This bolsters our position that what we approved and transmitted to the Senate is a constitutionally compliant General Appropriations Bill,” the Leyte lawmaker said, referring to Lacson.
“Let me reiterate, the money measure that we passed under the leadership of Speaker Cayetano will marshal a budget for a meaningful change and a reflection not only of the President’s vision to make the life of Filipinos better, but also of the people’s will,” he said.
“As far as I know, this is the first time that Senator Lacson recognized that the national budget transmitted by the House to the Senate is pork-free, bereft of any illegal parking of funds and insertions,” Dasmariñas City Rep. Elpidio Barzaga Jr., chairman of the committee on environment and natural resources, said.
“We have done our part and the ball is now in the hands of senators to consider the very good proposal of their colleague,” Barzaga, president of the National Unity Party, pointed out.